Granita in Islington, the Gay Hussar in Soho: to the list of venues indelibly linked to the mucky business of politics we can now add Wangies of Eccles – the pub in Salford where former Happy Mondays dancer Bez chose to officially launch his political career on Tuesday night.

The stage was set with a banner proclaiming Bez's campaign slogan: "Shake your maracas if you're against the frackers". There was also a picture of the 50-year-old wearing a beekeeping suit; one of him in an anorak nestled among some foliage; and another of him at an anti-fracking protest.

It soon emerged that Bez, who has spent the past few years living a near subsistence existence in a commune in Herefordshire, is not standing as an independent in the Martin Bell tradition – he never did have the makings of a solo artist. Instead he is part of a brand new political grouping, the Reality party, formed a few weeks ago by a disaffected Liberal Democrat from Blackpool.

Until very recently, Jon Bamborough was data officer for the Blackpool and Cleveley Lib Dems, and served both as a councillor and an election agent. The end of his love affair with the party coincided with him talking to an old friend, Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta, who told him that Bez had been threatening to run for office.

Apparently he'd made an off-the-cuff remark in the Manchester Evening News about wanting to replace Hazel Blears as the MP for Salford and Eccles – she's standing down in 2015 – and the idea received such approval that he decided to actually run.

Bez is swamped by photographers during an anti-fracking protest at Barton Moss, near Manchester. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Within days Bamborough had registered the party name with the Electoral Commission and rallied others to stand on the ticket. He claims 130 people had come forward as "serious" parliamentary candidates for next year's general election.

But the first Reality party politician to face the ballot will be Jackie Anderson, who is standing in next month's local elections in the Salford ward of Irlam on an anti-fracking ticket. For months this winter, Irlam was home to the Barton Moss protection camp, which was making life difficult for energy firm iGas as it carried out exploratory drilling in a field by the M62.

But just as Ukip would be nothing without Nigel Farage, the Reality party is really all about Bez – real name Mark Berry – who on Tuesday was looking healthier than he ever did in the 1990s in a salmon coloured woolly jumper, hippy pendant and jeans.

He took to the stage brandishing a pair of maracas and bellowed his new catchphrase to cheers from the well-lubricated crowd before heralding "a true revolution". He then gave what was billed as a speech, a freewheeling rant in which he advocated free energy, water and public transport for all, promised to look after the nation's grandparents, pledged to outlaw GM crops, punish the bankers and floated various other idealistic policies that a lone MP in Westminster would have precisely no chance of implementing.

It was dark in the pub, but he didn't appear to blink once: his clear blue eyes bulging like a deranged Fraggle and his absence of bottom teeth causing an unfortunate spray of saliva to project into the audience when he got particularly excited.

Asked afterwards for his opinion on HS2, the high-speed rail link between north and south, he admitted he didn't have one. As for his views on UK immigration – should the door remain open? – he denounced any objectors to immigration as being part of a shadowy plot run by "the capitalist corporations" and "the bankers".

And what of his recent conviction for domestic violence? In 2010, he was found guilty of throttling his then girlfriend and the mother of his young son and served a brief spell in prison. Another "conspiracy", apparently.

Few potential voters in Wangies seemed bothered. "Everyone's had a life," said Steve Rice, an engineer from Birkenhead, referring to the widely published photograph of George Osborne in his 20s with a prostitute and white powder, which he has always denied was cocaine. "Should we suffer the rest of our lives because of something we've done? People should forgive."

Plans to evict up to 60 activists, who have been camped outside the Barton Moss gas fracking exploration facility since November last year, are on hold while their lawyers make a legal challenge in the courts